Modes of ordering tourismscapes
6 Modes of ordering tourismscapes
6.5 Conclusion
Studying tourismscapes focuses the attention on processes of association of tourism entrepreneurs (like tour operators, hoteliers, middleman, guides, and drivers), governmental and non-governmental agencies, locals and tourists, technologies and environments. ‘Small’ and
‘big’ entrepreneurs, beaches and mountains, paperwork and computer programs all gain their observed properties through association with others.
Translation is the process and methods by which actors form tourismscapes, the processes of ordering which try to convert ordering into order, the processes in which a relative durability in tourismscapes is striven for. And indeed, some tourismscapes might last longer than others.
Therefore, it is plausible to go out and look for fairly coherent and large-scale ordering patterns that generate, define and interrelate elements in relatively consistent ways. And that is what we have in mind when we talk of ‘modes of ordering’. These modes of ordering define how to ‘read’
tourism, how to amalgamate people and things, how to constitute human-human as well as human-spatial interactions, and how to interact with other projects and their modes of ordering.
Thus, these modes of ordering underlie the processes of association.
Hence, tourismscapes emerge from the encounter, the interaction, the mutual influencing and the conditioning of several modes of ordering. What occurs as ‘states of affairs’ on Lanzarote and Texel and in Tanzania and Manuel Antonio at a particular moment, emerges from particular constellations of various modes of ordering, interlocking in particular ways and collectively defining the apparent course of action and development opportunities.
Thus, unfolding tourismscapes implies probing the modes of ordering of hoteliers, tour operators, guides, taxi drivers, non-governmental and governmental organizations as well as others that define their outcomes. In doing so, first and obviously, the study of tourismscapes
Chapter 6 Modes of ordering tourismscapes
needs to proceed beyond essential categories and dichotomies such as small versus big, formal versus informal, global versus local. Studies focusing on the role of entrepreneurs in performing tourismscapes should reveal the modes of ordering of entrepreneurs, the relations they are entangled in and their laborious processes of translation. They should avoid studying entrepreneurs in terms of pre-defined categories as ‘formal’ or ‘informal’ or ‘patrons’ and ‘brokers’, as they are relational effects. Instead we should analyse how the distinction is constructed and used in the process in which actors attempt to construct themselves as ‘collectifs’.
Likewise, whether studying tour operators and their accomplices or other actors who perform tourismscapes, we should examine how they interconnect, and how these actor-networks diverge and converge as a result of processes of ordering and emergent power relations. As we have seen, some projects (Ecole Travel, some modules of the Cultural Tourism Programme) have been successful, while others (CANAMET, Rio Chirripo Pacifico, other modules) have been less successful. Success or failure is an ordering effect. A successful project is one that has been able to become an ‘obligatory point of passage’ between the heterogeneous materials of the processes of association in question. However, even success is always relative and uncertain, as in all cases the heterogeneous order has to be continuously repaired and legitimized. In the meantime, the less successful ones are ceaselessly struggling to hold their bits and pieces together and to enrol others in their network. And finally, those who failed never sang the same song as those they depended on.
In sum, in Chapters 5 and 6, I have imputed tourismscapes as a scientific ordering mode to the bits and pieces that make up what we label as tourism. Introducing the notion of tourismscapes and bringing modes of ordering into play enabled me to re-conceptualize tourism. It allowed me to develop an agenda for tourism research, which I shall present in Chapter 9. But, as observed in Chapter 5, this particular imputation is also tentative.
The imputation will be more successful if it not only evokes new lines of research but also sheds light on possible innovations that address urgent issues related to sustainable tourism development. I shall tackle this second challenge in the following two chapters. In Chapter 7, I shall show how the particular configurations of people and things in tourismscapes induce multifaceted problems in terms of sustainability, and direct the discussion towards the hybrid environments that are included or externalized by actors performing tourismscapes. Then, in Chapter 8, I shall discuss the search for new patterns of coordination between the constituents of tourismscapes – namely people, technology and environments – and indicate the potentials for innovation towards sustainable development of tourism.
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Notes
1 Producers and consumers are not mere essences, but the simultaneous end product of all sorts of relations, which are often, if not always, mediated through objects. The identity of both producers and consumers is mediated through things (produced and consumed) and services (provided or used) as well as by the complex array of skills, knowledge and everything else that is needed to produce, consume, provide or use a product or service (Verschoor, 1997a: 230).
2 Already in 1998, Kobb and Mmari (1998: 7) suggested that the purchase and use of mobile telephones would solve communication problems between CTP modules and tour operators in Arusha.
3 According to Law (1994: 21), in many ways, modes of ordering are like Michel Foucault’s discourses: they are forms of strategic arranging that are intentional but do not necessarily have a subject. However, in the writing of Foucault discourses are already in place. They generate instances, and as they do so they reproduce themselves. But Foucault does not tell stories about how they might come to perform themselves differently – how they might come to reshape themselves in new embodiments or instantiations. And nor do we learn much about how they might interact together when they are performed and embodied. This is where Law parts company with Foucault. For Law has been arguing that a mode of ordering is always limited. It sometimes generates precarious pools of apparent order. Certainly it does not hold the world in an iron grip of a totalizing hegemony (ibid.: 22). Law’s proposal is therefore to take the notion of discourse and cut it down to size. This means: first, we should treat it as a set of patterns that might be imputed to the networks of the social; second, we should look for discourses in the plural, not discourse in the singular; third we should treat discourses as ordering attempts, not orders; fourth, we should explore how they are performed, embodied and told in different materials; and fifth, we should consider the ways in which they interact, change or indeed face extinction (ibid.: 95). This then, according to Law (1994) is a way of handling the notion of discourse within the context of a pragmatic and relationally materialist sociology.
4 In 1921 Max Weber in 1921 discerned zweckrational and wertrational; see Thurlings 1975 (162-163) and Lengkeek (1994;
78-79). A similar distinction is made by Mannheim between formal or functional and substantive or social rationality (see for an extensive discussion for example Zafirovski, 2003). In the case of Multatuli, clearly end-given rationality eventually conquered value-given rationality.
5 The importance of interweaving also stems from the principles of actor-network theory stressing the performative character of actor-networks, where actors are performed in, by and through relations (Law, 1999a)
6 Here we meet once again the influence of Foucault on the conceptualization of ‘modes of ordering’ (see Law, 1994 and 2001). As Howarth (2000: 80-82) asserts, especially in his later writings, Foucault stresses the ever-changing connections between different discourses, as well as the contingent relationships between discursive and non-discursive practices. Foucault seeks to incorporate non-non-discursive elements, such as institutions, policies and material objects, into a viable discursive approach to social phenomena.
7 Peters (2003: 324) claims that in order to sell travel speed and shorter travel times, Cook had to build passages. As a unit of analysis, passages can be described and researched at three levels. First as heterogeneous spatio-temporal orders that assumes both material elements (in the Cook case: trains, stations, hotel coupons, schedules) and immaterial elements (Cook’s teetotalism ideals and colonialist presuppositions). Second, as planned but contingent orders that have to be continuously ‘repaired’. And third, as orders that both include and exclude people, places and times, which accounts for the fact that the passage of Cook’s trip around the world was also shaped by the political topography of the Victorian empire (Peters, 2003).
8 This section is based on seven interviews with representatives from various tour operators; the interviews were conducted in the second half of 2004.
9 As Appelman (2004: 162) explains, the success of Thomas Cook and Son derived from the particular combination of an explanatory entrepreneurial mode by the father, inspired by religious and political motivations, and the chief concern of his son John Mason Cook to balance the books. The latter provided the stability needed to ensure a healthy profit that consequently created room for further exploration and expansion (see also Peters, 2003).
10 This section is based primarily on correspondence by email with Marinus Gisolf, one of the owners of Ecole Travel.
Over a period of one year, we sent each other emails with questions and replies in order to discover some of the tactics of translation applied by an incoming tour operator like Ecole Travel.
11 The convergence or degree of integration of the network depends on the degrees of translation: ‘the more successful a translation, the stronger a translation regime, and the higher a degree of momentum, the more constituent actors of a network can be seen as working together in a common enterprise’ (Verschoor, 1997a: 105).
12 However, the 300 officially registered hotels had an average of 36 rooms each, while the around 800 unregistered hotels had an average of only 11 rooms each (Duim, 1977a).
Chapter 6
13 According to Verschoor (1997a: 213), durability and robustness of translations in actor-networks are, above all, inscribed in intermediaries: ‘one could posit that it is more difficult for a competing translation to impose itself in a situation in which more and more actors are associated with one another through durable and robust intermediaries’
(ibid.: 214).
14 See also Law and Mol (2000) for an extensive discussion on immutable mobiles.
15 This paragraph is greatly inspired by Allen’s (2003) book ‘Lost Geographies of Power’ in which he discusses amongst others the work of Foucault, Latour and Lefebvre.
16 This imagined space consists of what Lefebvre (1991) denotes as representations of space and representational spaces.
17 The number of tourists visiting Turkey increased from 5.4 million in 1990 to around 14 million in 2003. In the period 1994-2004 the number of Dutch tourists increased from 180,000 to more than 1 million (Hart, 2004).
18 Moreover, in many instances, like tourism on Texel, tour operators even play a very minor role. There, as we have seen, the Texel Tourism Board (VVV), campsites, nature conservation organizations, the local council, small tourism enterprises and their associations, and even interest groups like Ten for Texel interlock in particular ways.
19 Recently, the vulnerability of this industry and its employment was illustrated by an enormous loss of jobs worldwide.
On top of the 6.5 million jobs lost in 200-2001, another 5 million were lost in 2003 due to a prolonged lack of economic dynamics, safety concerns in view of security events and the impact of SARS (Belau, 2003).
20 Recently, a Special Interest Group within the framework of ATLAS started a research programme on small-scale tourism entrepreneurs (see Morrison and Thomas, 2004). The research of Dahles and Bras (1999) at Tilburg University can also be seen as a programme.
21 For example, in the region of Zuid-West Friesland (Netherlands), Caalders (2001 and 2002) interviewed 74 tourism entrepreneurs. She found that 60% of the enterprises had no employees the year round. Only 7 employed more than 5 persons. Even in the high season more than 40% of the businesses employ no more than 2 persons. Less than 40%
employed more than 5 persons in the high season.
22 In studying ‘farming styles’, Ploeg (2003: 46) concluded that on family farms there will be one style, one strategy, although there of course could be tension between men and women and various principles that are balanced against one another.
23 See Verschoor (1997a), especially pages 9-11, 135 and 225. Verschoor questions such notions as ‘the market’,
‘development’, ‘capitalism’ and ‘post-Fordist production regimes’, to name but a few. The reason for this is ‘that these terms do not enjoy a pre-existence on their own. Rather, they reflect classificatory practices that have been constructed in the course of the history of the social sciences’ (ibid.: 225).
24 An actor-network perspective does not start by defining the character or morphology of the networks, but allows entrepreneurs to do this definitional work of ordering, which is the process of defining the economic transactions and relations an entrepreneur becomes entangled in (Callon, 1999: 188; Verschoor, 1997a: 21).
